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Should the oracle be taken literally?

bostonian

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Hello all. Please excuse what may be an overly basic question from a beginner. But my question is should the I-Ching be taken literally as an oracle or is it meant to be more poetic and inspiring. I recently asked the I-Ching about a business venture I recently entered into. It returned Hexagram 14. Ta Yu / Possession in Great Measure. Is the I-Ching predicting that because of the business venture i will receive great material wealth?
 
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meng

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It could be entirely literal, but it could also be entirely metaphorical. Which is it? I hope you let us know.
 

willowfox

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I recently asked the I-Ching about a business venture I recently entered into. It returned Hexagram 14.

Well, if in the next few years you do well with your business adventure, then you know that the answer that was given, Hex 14 does indeed mean prosperity and good fortune in real terms.
 

hilary

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That's not so much an overly basic question as a completely fundamental one. I think it can be taken literally, but to do so it's important to dig deeply into the meaning. With Hexagram 14, that would mean asking how it describes its 'great possession', where it arises from and how it comes about. Then you can start to use the reading as advice...

For example, is there 'harmony between people' (Hexagram 13) so that their combined efforts create wealth greater than the sum of the parts? Is there an open quality of leadership (like the 5th line) that naturally draws people's strengths together? And since there is powerful potential here (looking at the Judgement), what is in place to ensure that this potential is well-used?
 

bostonian

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thanks all! So Hilary, are you suggesting that I ask the I-Ching further questions such as the ones you suggested.

By the way, if it matters, the changing line was nine in the 4th place, which is appropriate, but I don't think keeping up with others would be a problem for me. And the transformed Hexagram 37 "the family" does fit because if I succeed in acquiring wealth, I would be responsible for helping my extended family members financially, and there could be problems and squabbles. In fact, while I didn't ask the I-Ching about these family matters, issues surrounding family are a major concern should I become more financially successful than some other members of my family. I was (am) a bit worried that financial success on my part could in fact hurt the good relations we now enjoy. So Hexagram 37 seems helpful and appropriate. Of course not all the details in this hexagram 37 are literally right. For example, my brothers do not have wives.
 
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hilary

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Actually I was suggesting you look at the hexagram you already have - its texts and contexts - with those questions in mind. I suppose what I'm really saying is that before you can evaluate whether what it says can be taken literally, you need an in-depth understanding of what it's saying ;) .

14.4 changes to hexagram 26, Great Taming. To get to 37 you'd need to have lines 2, 4 and 5 changing.
 

bostonian

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yes, 2, 4 and 5 are changing. When reading the lines, are you supposed to look at all the changing lines?

What texts are you referring to?
 

hilary

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There's a school of thought that you should always reduce the lines you read down to just one, but I don't agree with it. (At all, in any way... insert rant here...)

I'm generally entirely surrounded by I Ching texts, and have a huge file of notes and translation/interpretation ideas from readings. The other sources I refer to most are LiSe's site, Wilhelm, Jack Balkin, Karcher's Total I Ching, Rutt's Zhouyi, and Bradford Hatcher's work. (I just received my copy of the print version - wonderful!)
 

dobro p

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I suppose what I'm really saying is that before you can evaluate whether what it says can be taken literally, you need an in-depth understanding of what it's saying ;) .

Gee, you're smart sometimes. Don't be offended at the 'sometimes'. :)
 

hilary

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Oh, I amaze myself. (Sometimes.)
 

rickmatz

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Hello all. Please excuse what may be an overly basic question from a beginner. But my question is should the I-Ching be taken literally as an oracle or is it meant to be more poetic and inspiring. I recently asked the I-Ching about a business venture I recently entered into. It returned Hexagram 14. Ta Yu / Possession in Great Measure. Is the I-Ching predicting that because of the business venture i will receive great material wealth?

My two cents is that you can't take the reading literally because YOU are supplying the interpretation! The way I see it is that the hexagrams provide a mirror of you internal, unconcious state; giving you an opportunity to get a glimpse of how you really feel about it.

I find that when my mind is all balled up about something and I'm just not getting anywhere, the I Ching is a way of teasing apart a few strings in the Gordian Knot called my brain.
 

bradford

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I try to first take it literarily rather than literally -
to get the core or gestalt of the metaphor first
and interpret from there. But then it's often only
a single word or number that you need to see in
the text and your "answer" really has nothing to do
with what the text actually means.
 
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maremaria

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I try to first take it literarily rather than literally -
to get the core or gestalt of the metaphor first
and interpret from there. But then it's often only
a single word or number that you need to see in
the text and your "answer" really has nothing to do
with what the text actually means.

That is interesting !!!
It has happened to me too. You get a reading, you have changing lines , relating hexagram,etc, etc but you can’t concentrate on them because there are a word or two words that blink like neon lights and looks like an answer.
Those times feels like the whole combination of lines and hexagrams we get is just because they bear those words. Still not sure if that approach is correct, so I try to see texts literally and metaphorically just in case I oversee something.

Brad, in those cases, do you "ingore" the hexagrams and lines and keep the words or not ?

Maria
 

hilary

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...and could you give us an example of what you mean by 'a single number'?

(I remember a reading shared here years ago - was it from Val? - in which she'd asked about someone calling her, and puzzled over the hexagrams to no avail. When the phone eventually rang, she looked at the display on her digital clock and saw the numbers of her two hexagrams there. Is that the kind of thing you mean?)
 

Trojina

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That is interesting !!!
It has happened to me too. You get a reading, you have changing lines , relating hexagram,etc, etc but you can’t concentrate on them because there are a word or two words that blink like neon lights and looks like an answer.
Those times feels like the whole combination of lines and hexagrams we get is just because they bear those words. Still not sure if that approach is correct, so I try to see texts literally and metaphorically just in case I oversee something.

Brad, in those cases, do you "ingore" the hexagrams and lines and keep the words or not ?

Maria

Yes has happened to me too...like asking about an endoscopy ie tube from throat to stomach procedure i was worried about as i can get a bit OTT about things like that, threw 58 unchanging...and just for some reason fixed on the word 'open' somewhere and felt/knew i had my answer...which i did, the situation as i came to it allowed openess...hope I've not grossed anyone out lol. One aspect of 58 blinked at me like you say 'a neon light'..
 

Trojina

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My two cents is that you can't take the reading literally because YOU are supplying the interpretation! The way I see it is that the hexagrams provide a mirror of you internal, unconcious state; giving you an opportunity to get a glimpse of how you really feel about it.

I find that when my mind is all balled up about something and I'm just not getting anywhere, the I Ching is a way of teasing apart a few strings in the Gordian Knot called my brain.

Well how can say 'you can't take the reading literally' when its many peoples experience that you can at times takes your answer absolutely literally...and theres much evidence of this anecdotally round the forum. Your're creating limits about what you think is or is not possible with the Yi to accomodate your belief that its a mirror of ones unconscious state...using the word 'unconscious' here in its Freudian sense i think..maybe thats what you're comfortable with..you want to think it only reflects how you really feel about something. Well sometimes it does that but if you use it for any length of time you will soon realise it does way more than that. You could get around this by calling the unconscious the supa conscious or something IOW you are accessing part of your 'greater' mind if you really always want to think that when you consult the Yi you consult yourself, I think many people do this, it doesn't matter really where you think the answers come from....but you can hardly say with any confidence the Yi can't be literal...thats just your opinion, doesn't tally with my experience at all...and no I don't feel the Yi just reflects my unconscious either ....people have very different ideas about where the answer comes from..luckily I think it makes little difference to their relation with the Yi..unless they have decided in advance what it can't do as you seem to have ;) by deciding the Yi can't be literal haven't you just robbed yourself of the help a literal answer can provide. When the Yi gives you a literal answer abouut some practical matter are you instead going to be examining the depths of your psyche and missing the actual answer ?

I think when people first began using the Yi the questions were always of practical nature.. I read somewhere, maybe Lise, that the first questions were such as "will the crops fail" or "will it rain"..
 
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rickmatz

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Trojan,

I became my response by saying that it was my opinion.

Best Regards,

Rick
 

bradford

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Seventy virgins. Oh, wrong book.

That's seventy-two virgins. What they don't tell the martyrs is that they are all sworn to remain virgins. And the number 72 guarantees that at any given moment twelve of them will have PMS. In other words, it ain't really paradise - it's the other place.
 

Sparhawk

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In other words, it ain't really paradise - it's the other place.

It is all in the good spirit of martyrdom: Quick death on earth, eternal suffering in "paradise" :D
 

bostonian

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That's seventy-two virgins. What they don't tell the martyrs is that they are all sworn to remain virgins.

Right, that's virgin as in vestal virgin or nuns. I'm sure the martyrs know that.
 

dobro p

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I've never met a virgin who did the I Ching. It'd be easier to meet a virgin who did the Quran, I reckon. Not that I'd be any the wiser.
 

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